


A Mutually Beneficial Arrangement

by Toft



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Back Pain, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Barebacking, Baseball, Casual Sex, Communication Failure, Dogs, F/M, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Negotiations, Past Relationship(s), Phone Sex, Pining, Praise Kink, Self-Medication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-02 23:09:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8687080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toft/pseuds/Toft
Summary: Harold and John begin a casual sex arrangement. It doesn't go particularly well.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Wychwood for beta, to theragnarok and Isagel for looking at earlier drafts of this and cheerleading, and to all of my corner of POI fandom for being lovely.
> 
> A note about pairings and tagging: John/Harold is the primary pairing in this fic. Harold's relationship backstory is a significant part of this story, which is why Harold/Grace is tagged, but Grace does not appear as a character in this story outside of his memory, so I have not tagged her as a character.

Harold barely remembers their escape as the wail of sirens just became perceptible in the distance, their return to his safe-house, the glass of water that John put into his hands. Left alone in the bathroom, with John a quiet presence outside, Harold showers. He urinates. He examines the bruises on his thigh and hip, overlaying old scars and which he assumes will cause him a great deal of stiffness and pain in short order, and the long scratch along his shoulder from the knife he had barely avoided - had not, in fact, avoided, but that John had deflected so that it only scratched Harold rather than killing him. Everything has a muted, gentle feeling of distance as he dresses. He has a bland set of shirts and one of his least favourite suits in the bedroom closet, but buttons feel like too much work, so he pulls on a t-shirt and some old jogging pants, left over from when he could still jog. He stares at his hands, his limbs - the infinitely complex and fragile machine of the human body - and loses moments to enjoying the soft fabric of the t-shirt between his fingers.

John raps quietly on the door. “Finch? Food’s here.”

Harold has never been so hungry in his life. He barely looks at John before digging into the pad thai John has placed on the counter for him. He’s startled by how delicious it is - salt, the sourness of the tamarind and lime, the textures of chicken and peanuts. “This is very good, Mr Reese,” he says, after a few blissful mouthfuls. “Did you find a new place?”

“It’s only Thailand King,” John says, and Harold looks up at the amusement in his voice, then takes stock of the situation.

“Oh,” he says. “How peculiar. Adrenaline?”

John is eating slowly, his eyes fixed on Harold. “Probably.”

“Do you feel like this after every fight?” Harold says, wonderingly, then immediately regrets it when John’s expression shifts. Everything feels so sharp and clear, he feels as if he can see everything. “No, of course you don’t. It must wear off, quite quickly I would imagine. And - not all situations resolve themselves as well as today’s.”

John nods, still with that strange, intense scrutiny. “Today was a good day.”

They saved a life today, and nobody was hurt - apart from a few bruises and cuts hardly worth mentioning. There was a flash of brief, extreme violence, and Harold had thought for a second that he would die, but he is alive. He feels wonderful.

“I feel wonderful,” Harold says, experimentally. He flexes his fingers and looks at them again, and John coughs a laugh.

“You’re stoned, Harold.”

Harold doesn’t dignify that with an answer, but he does stop playing with his hands and finishes his noodles. The food grounds him a little, tethers the delicious, floating feeling into something more physical. He’s aware of John’s continued gaze as a prickle across his sensitized skin. Why _is_ John staring? Is he really behaving so strangely? Is his incapacity so amusing?

It’s a relief when John finishes his meal and gets up, releasing Harold for the time being. John is moving around, picking up the take-out containers and disposing of them in sure, economical movements, and Harold gets lost again, this time in John’s body, in how beautiful it is. He thinks that he’d like to go for a walk with him, perhaps - is it dark outside? he isn’t sure - or - what he’d really like to do, he realizes suddenly, is have sex, and he looks away from John as quickly as he can, but the train of thought has begun and there’s no derailing it.

His skin feels different, tingling and warm; his hip doesn’t hurt, and the absence of pain is itself a kind of pleasure. His body is awake, alive, and wants him to feel it. He starts to wonder whether John will give him some privacy or whether he will have to ask for it, when John is suddenly very close behind him, so close Harold can feel his warmth.

“How are you feeling?” John says, and his hands are on Harold’s shoulders, palms smoothing down his arms. Even such a simple touch feels almost unbearably good, and Harold’s eyes drop closed of their own accord. John’s thumb brushes over the bare skin above Harold’s collar, and Harold’s breath catches. John laughs quietly. “That’s what I thought.”

Harold has the strangest sensation of watching from outside himself as - dear God - John kisses his neck where his thumb had touched, then sucks at the skin there, using his teeth to scrape at the sensitized skin as Harold stands rooted to the spot, his eyes closed against the shock of John’s hot, wet mouth. He turns at last, reaches out blindly and finds John’s hip, and, encouraged by the noise he makes, Harold strokes along his ribcage, his back, learning the shape of John’s torso by feel, until John stops kissing Harold’s neck and starts unbuttoning his own shirt.

“What is this, Mr Reese?” Harold manages at last, his voice a hoarse shadow of its usual self. John gives him a smile full of teeth, stepping back into Harold’s space and pulling Harold’s hands back onto his naked skin before he can catch his breath or think. He should think about this - just for a second, he really should -

“Call it a mutually beneficial arrangement,” John says, and his eyes flutter closed when Harold fans out his hands over John’s soft bare back. “And don’t call me Reese in bed.”

“We’re not in bed,” Harold says, dazed by the expanse of John’s warm, naked skin, blood beating beneath muscle.

“Yeah, why is that?” John purrs, low as smoke, and starts steering Harold towards the bedroom.

“I can’t say I recall right now,” Harold says weakly, and John smiles again, his eyes laughing.

“I like you like this, Harold.”

When Harold hesitates at the door of the bedroom, some part of his mind clamouring that he’s letting an accident of brain chemistry push him into a rash and unwise action, John breathes on the nape of his neck, and Harold shivers.

“It’s a perk,” John murmurs. “You learn to enjoy it when you can. Let’s enjoy it, Harold, okay?”

“All right,” Harold says, because he can’t think why on earth not, and John takes him to bed, helps him pull off his t-shirt and the joggers, shivers in pleasure when Harold runs his fingers through his hair where it’s soft and short at the nape of his neck, and makes a pleased sound when Harold kisses him open-mouthed.

“You’re getting the right idea,” John breathes, then he shimmies down Harold’s body, pulls down his boxers, and sucks Harold’s cock into his mouth.

“Oh,” Harold says, lost in it. John’s mouth is so _good,_ and soon he’s falling too hard, too fast. “Oh, John - John, don’t -”

He grips John’s hair hard to pull him back, and John moans desperately, resisting him and bucking into his hand at the same time; John’s pleasure and his own are too much in combination, and Harold climaxes, catching John on the chin. John laughs breathlessly, wipes his face on the sheets and shimmies up the bed to kiss Harold’s slack mouth. He tastes of semen. Harold stares at him, panting, feeling as if his brain has been left somewhere far behind current events.

“You okay?” John says, grinning fiercely, laughter sharp on his face - who _is_ this John? Harold has certainly never met him - and then he rolls onto his back, swings his legs up and pulls off his pants and underwear in one smooth movement. He stretches out on the bed, smug, comfortable and enjoying his body in a way Harold recognises from when he fights.

“Nobody likes a show-off, John,” Harold says, and tugs at him until John is positioned over him on hands and knees, then reaches down between them. John closes his eyes when Harold touches his cock, which is hot and smooth, nestling into Harold’s palm.

“Yeah,” John rasps, and Harold jerks him off, able to set aside his bemusement for the sheer pleasure of it, John’s sharp breaths, the incongruous softness of his skin, the heat between them. It doesn’t take John long either; he comes in silence, wetness spilling onto Harold’s palm, then he hangs his head, panting, his breath hot and damp on Harold’s throat. After a moment he rolls over onto the mattress beside Harold, and stretches, long and luxurious, then hands Harold a kleenex.

“That was great,” he says, and yawns. “Thanks, Harold.”

“You’re welcome,” Harold says, still dazed. He feels as if awkwardness should emerge round about now, but the sensation of physical contentment is stifling all his concerns. “Thank _you_.”

“You’ll want to sleep now,” John says, and rolls off the bed. Harold watches him go with a frown, but can’t muster the energy to move. He feels as if he’s melting into the mattress, and sleep sounds fabulous. John pulls the blanket over him. He moves easily, loose-limbed and obviously comfortable in his nakedness; Harold supposes that in the military one must lose self-consciousness about such things. John looks down at him, his expression solicitous and full of affection.

“Sweet dreams, Harold,” John says, and Harold falls asleep before he even turns out the light.

*

When Harold wakes, a full eight hours later, he’s conscious of several things: he’s much less stiff and sore than he anticipated - in fact, he feels better than he has in months - and John isn’t in the safehouse. He also has the words “situational homosexuality” hovering at the surface of his mind. He considers them as he drinks the tea John left for him, and looks at the note on the counter that says just _Gone to walk Bear_. He still feels just a little bit… ebulliant… but the glow that suffused the whole world the previous night has receded. He’s able to replay the evening’s events without the haze of whatever cocktail of endorphins he had pumping through his bloodstream as a result of his near-miss. John had seduced him far more easily than he would have thought possible. _No_ , he thinks; that suggests that Harold wasn’t a fully consenting participant. It’s more that John had been moving along a road laid down long ago, and Harold had responded to his confidence, his ease with the situation.

Sex after missions, Harold concludes, is familiar territory for John, even if sex with men is not part of his usual repertoire, or at least not so far as his CIA masters were aware. This slots neatly into the picture he has gradually been building of John’s life as an agent and a soldier, from both intelligence he gathered before recruiting John and from what little he has since learned from John himself. John had responded very strongly to the betrayal of Ulrich Kohl by his Stasi team.

Harold has long been aware that their relationship is a complex one, not quite employer-employee, not quite partners, not quite friends. But they are certainly a team, of a sort, and it seems that John now views Harold as a safe outlet for emotional and physical release after the experience of intense danger. He has almost certainly had other teammates, partners - or his handler, perhaps? - fill this role in the past. It isn’t something Harold would have thought of, but he can see the convenience of such an arrangement. Mutually beneficial, indeed.

On reflection, he thinks as he finishes his tea, his current feelings of well-being might be from the sex, rather than the brush with death. He really does feel very good. He finds his earpiece, and puts it in.

“Good morning, Mr Reese.”

_“Morning, Finch. New number?”_

John is panting slightly. Perhaps he’s jogging. He sounds like he’s smiling.

“Not yet.” Harold hesitates. This is the time to have a conversation, if they’re going to. “As a matter of fact, I just woke up.”

_“Sleep well?”_

Definitely smiling. Harold feels the corners of his mouth pull up in response.

“Very well. Thank you for the tea.”

_“Thought you could use it. Call me if anything comes up, okay?”_

 He cuts the connection. Well, Harold thinks, as he washes his cup: that’s that.

*

It happens again, of course. Harold hadn’t been in any doubt that it would; now that John knows that this outlet is available to him, why wouldn’t he take advantage of it? Over the course of the next few months, Harold comes to recognise that sex after missions fulfills a number of functions for John, and can express or satisfy a number of emotions. Pre-eminent among them, but in no particular order, are:

  1. Relief



(When they had very nearly lost a number, but after eight hours of surgery her prognosis was good, and John followed Harold wearily out of the hospital back to the library then crowded him onto the couch for a brief session of mutual masturbation, after which John fell asleep with his pants still open)

  1. Frustration



(When the perpetrator of a pyramid scheme escaped their number but also escaped the NYPD, and John went on a four-mile run then blew Harold at his desk)

  1. Exhilaration



(When John fought eight armed members of a west side gang to a standstill and completely destroyed a printing press with a grenade launcher, then turned his wild grin on Harold and attempted to initiate sexual intercourse _in the car_ , which Harold did not allow.)

There are certain parameters John observes, which Harold notices as the incidents accrue and he is able to gather data. John will only make an advance when Harold has been in the field or has shared in the physical danger in some way, even if this only involves sitting in a car around the corner from the warehouse while John commits millions of dollars worth of property damage. John will never refer to these incidents before or after the fact, but during he will be a tantalising combination of vocal and impersonal, calling Harold by his name, appreciative, even hungry - dear God, the sounds he makes keep Harold up at night - but in a strange way, he himself loses specificity.

(“What would you like?” Harold says, proud of how even his voice is, as John sucks on his neck and coaxes him back against the desk. His breath is coming quickly against Harold’s throat, and Harold can feel his own heartbeat speed up in response. John tugs at Harold’s wrist, guiding his hand to his erection, and when Harold complies, John sighs and tips his head back.

“This?”

“Yeah.”

And Harold doesn’t ask any more questions. He tells himself that it’s because in the moment, his desire to make John feel good always trumps his desire to open John up and look inside him, but in his most honest moments, he knows it’s because he’s afraid that John will cease to allow him even these moments of limited intimacy.)

John is a good lover, if rather focused on the ends rather than the means, reckless, and careless of physical endangerment (his own). In fact, if Harold had ever wondered what John might be like as a lover (if he’d ever let himself imagine what John might be like as a lover) he supposes he could have predicted John’s ruthlessly efficient blowjobs and the fact that, more often than not, after one of their sessions Harold feels as if he’s been hit by a truck. John fucks like someone added the phrase “in bed” to his CIA personnel evaluation. In fact, the persona that John maintains during post-fieldwork sex with Harold is _so_ consistent with who he becomes in the field that Harold is at first bemused, then, later, suspicious.

If there’s one thing he’s learned from surveillance, it’s that nobody is wholly consistent in all areas of their life. Self-taught in this, as in most other things, it didn’t take Harold long to learn - taking himself as his first subject - that people compartmentalize to astonishing degrees, deceive themselves and others, reveal and create different facets of their characters for different people and places. He’s never been a Whitman fan, but for a while, he had the phrase “I am large, I contain multitudes” tacked to his primary laptop on a post-it. It seemed too pretentious, after a while, but it occasionally slides back into his mind when he watches people on camera, a useful lesson still.

The psychology of John Reese has been a source of fascination since well before they officially met, and this is an unexpected addition to Harold’s files (metaphorical, of course; he doesn’t keep physical or digital records on John himself anymore). Once he thinks he has felt out the new parameters, Harold can’t help testing them.

The first test is conducted by simple comparative analysis, and it is to determine whether sex will be a significant factor in John’s decision-making processes about Harold’s role in cases. Put bluntly: is he more likely to bring Harold into the field with sex as an incentive? Harold has kept careful records of their cases for the ten months since they began working together, and he has a workable amount of data. Harold reviews his files, comparing the cases before they first had sex with those after, although of course there are far fewer of the latter. The results are surprising. Harold has become gradually more involved in fieldwork, but the trajectory does not appear to have been affected at all by their new intimacy. In fact, if anything, Harold is less physically involved with cases than before they began having sex.

He tests John, all the same.

“I’ll meet you out there, Mr Reese,” Harold says, even though he knows it isn’t strictly necessary for him to come to the senator’s mistress’ house, and he loathes New Jersey, but there is perhaps only the slightest hesitation on the line before John says, _Stay put, Finch. I need you there in case Cresswell moves._

“Are you sure you can handle the encryption yourself?”

_You’ll talk me through it._

 

Harold invites John back to the library for dinner, afterwards. John declines, and goes offline for the evening. Harold’s invited John to have dinner with him only a few times before, and John has never declined. Harold lies awake that night in an apartment on the Upper East Side with the cold feeling that he has been too obvious, and that John has misunderstood his intentions, or, worse, understood them perfectly. He’ll have to be more careful. It occurs to him that he should have been more concerned about his own decision-making processes than John’s. John is accustomed to this; Harold has never had a casual sexual relationship in his life. He’s had very few sexual relationships at all, in fact, and he’s never really been sure - he doesn’t - he doesn’t know how to do this.

He looks at the ceiling and slowly, methodically, gets his panic under control. By morning, he is perfectly calm again.

*

As they become familiar with each other in this new way, the edges of what Harold has begun to think of (with some embarrassment but not without justification) as John’s sex alias begin to sharpen in definition. He is:

  1. Careful of Harold’s injuries, but not particularly concerned about them. 



(When John edges them towards the couch and Harold stumbles on John’s discarded t-shirt, John catches him and supports his weight for a breathless second as Harold stares up at him. He murmurs, _You wanna dance, Harold?_

It’s too smooth, too much something that other John would say, and Harold looks away and says _Most decidedly not._ John’s silent for a moment, then sets Harold on his feet before resuming unbuttoning his fly.)

  1. Exhibitionist.



( _You like to watch, right, Harold?_ he murmurs, and sits back on the bed and wraps his hand around his own cock, and Harold is breathless and confused and would really rather be still kissing him right now, plus there is a dark, slightly malicious layer of amusement under John’s words that makes him uneasy, but Harold _does_ like to watch, he really does, and John seems to like the attention.

 _I like watching you,_ Harold says, _You’re beautiful, John_ , and when he comes, John’s eyes flutter closed for only a second before he’s alert again, checking that Harold’s still watching.)

  1. Inhibited. Is that the right word, Harold wonders? Can one be both exhibitionist and inhibited? Guarded, perhaps, is better. Wary.



( _You can fuck me, if you like._

Harold is watching John’s face, curious at what he will say, and is disturbed by the way his expression blanks so completely. The steady rhythm of John’s hand on Harold’s cock stutters, then ceases altogether when he lets go and presses his hand to the mattress.

 _Sounds like that would be hard on your back,_ John says at last.

 _It might_ , Harold admits. John is already uncomfortable; he hates to talk during sex. _But I thought you might enjoy it._ He gestures around them. _And we are in a bed, for once._

John’s eyes flick away for an instant before he brings out the easy smile he favors for these encounters. _I’m good with this,_ he says, and wraps his palm around Harold again. Harold is overtaken by the sudden urge to apologize for crossing one of John’s unspecified boundaries, for upsetting him in some way he can’t fathom. He runs his hand through John’s hair, and John’s smile falters. There is some huge, terrible feeling behind it, glimpsed only in chinks, and Harold wants to soothe him, but can’t begin to see how.

 _It’s all right,_ Harold says. _Don’t worry about it, it was only a thought._ He sounds foolish even to himself.

 _Hey,_ John says, _Who’s worried?_

He slides down the bed and takes Harold in his mouth, sucks him to a too-fast orgasm, making a sound only when Harold drags his fingernails down the back of his neck. After Harold comes, John pulls off and takes a deep, shuddering breath. It’s only then that Harold realizes that John has climaxed against the mattress, in his boxers. He’s very careful not to let John see his surprise, but John’s cheek is hot against his thigh and a flush spreads down across his shoulders all the same. John spends a long time in the motel bathroom before excusing himself to go for a run. It’s below zero outside and he’s already chased their number’s ex-husband around three city blocks today, but Harold doesn’t say anything about it.)

*

Other parameters: John will not take steps to get them to a bed if there’s a nearby flat surface or chair that will do just as well. He prefers sexual encounters to last less than thirty minutes. He usually keeps at least one item of clothing on, or prevents Harold from undressing all the way. He never, never asks for anything.

*

Harold has spent the last two days working undercover at a software company on a series of uninteresting, buggy phone upgrades while they waited for their number’s danger to emerge. The fact that Ronald Lao, age forty-seven, was involved in siphoning off company money into private accounts was, as it turned out, a red herring; Lao’s administrative assistant was poisoning him because he was mistreating his dog. After Harold had rather unwisely confronted her about the poisoned coffee, she had thrown it in his face and attacked him with a stapler before John exploded through the window and wrestled her to the ground.

Harold is left nursing a black eye and a malnourished spaniel while John delivers Ms Mason to the police and, with Harold’s tacit consent, pays a short, non-fatal visit to Mr Lao. After Harold and he drop off the dog with a lonely young trainee veterinarian in need of help with his student loans, they share a cab back to the library, Harold deeply depressed, and John still seething with pent-up rage.

In the library, Harold intends to go back to work - he has some of Wren’s paperwork to catch up on - but he’s tired, and in pain, and the world is so full of mundane cruelty.

“You should put some ice on that, Harold.”

“What?”

John appears with Harold’s pain medication, a bottle of water, and one of the small cold gel packs.

“She really got you, huh?”

He’s smiling, but there’s something dark behind his eyes. Harold takes the pills and puts the ice against his face, and John’s expression eases somewhat.

“John, I think I’d like -” Harold says, pausing to readjust the ice pack, and John nods quickly, steps forward and falls to his knees.

“Oh,” Harold says weakly, as John muscles his legs apart and begins to open his fly. He had been going to say “ - to pick up Bear early” but to mention that when John is pressing his face into his stomach seems rude, even cruel. Harold drops the ice pack, takes hold of John’s shoulders and draws him up for a kiss, and John licks into his mouth eagerly, sweetly.

“You don’t have to wait for me to come into the field,” Harold murmurs, when they pause for breath. It’s been more than a week, he’s barely seen John, and he’s missed this, missed _him,_ he hadn’t realized how much. He runs his hand up and down John’s back, and John takes a shaky breath. “You can ask me, you know.”

John pulls back.

“I’m fine,” he says flatly.

Harold closes his eyes with frustration. “You are allowed to be more than fine, Mr Reese.”

He feels John drawing away, and grabs his shoulder in response, almost without thought.

“John,” he says. “I meant John.”

John looks at him with a strange expression on his face. Harold can’t tell if he’s amused, or deeply unhappy. Perhaps both.

“I’m sorry,” Harold says haltingly. The words feel hard in his mouth. “I’ve never - this is outside my experience. Perhaps I should have made that clear.”

John’s eyebrow twitches. “And by ‘this’ you mean…”

“For God’s sake, I’ve had sex with men before,” Harold snaps. John’s eyes are laughing.

“Is that so? Anyone I know?”

Harold moves straight past the question, as he does whenever John so blatantly fishes for information.

“I’ve never had a - a casual sexual relationship,” he says, pronouncing the words carefully so he doesn’t stumble over them. He can’t quite meet John’s eyes, although he isn’t sure why. He’s a grown man, for God’s sake. He should be able to have an conversation about sex. In his own defence, John seems equally uncomfortable; his shoulder has tensed under Harold’s hand.

“Is that what this is?” says John, his face smoothed out into his alias smile. A cold feeling like anger sinks in Harold’s stomach. “And here I thought it was a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“Is there a difference?” asks Harold, honestly curious.

John shrugs. “You want to fuck or not?”

“Yes,” says Harold. He strokes his hands up and down John’s biceps, but he isn’t sure if he’s trying to comfort himself or John. “Yes, of course.”

John’s face softens, but his smile still doesn’t reach his eyes. “That’s all there is to it.”

*

After a while, it becomes clear to Harold that although John certainly gains physical satisfaction from their encounters and continues to initiate them, he is, at some level, deeply unhappy. Whether he was always this unhappy and Harold has only recently come close enough to see it, or whether it is a result of their sexual intimacy, Harold isn’t sure. He spends considerable time thinking about the problem. Several things hold him back from calling a halt to the sexual component of their relationship:

  1. his concern about how a perceived rejection or slight might affect their working relationship (the numbers have to come first);


  1. he has no way of knowing whether John would in fact be less unhappy if Harold encouraged him to seek a different sexual outlet, or if it only would make the situation worse;


  1. he doesn’t want to.



The last one is, admittedly, not a good reason. But he’d be lying to himself if (John crowds Harold up against the wall of the library, his body is tall and solid and his lips are warm) he pretended (John’s tongue in his mouth, John’s hands on his bare skin) it didn’t have (the noise John makes in the back of his throat when Harold swallows him down) any weight in his decision.

*

“John,” Harold says, precariously balanced on the desk, hands under John’s shirt. “Would you rather we weren’t doing this?”

“What?” says John muzzily. It’s possible that he has a mild concussion. Harold is observing him, but, as John had pointed out, there’s no reason they can’t do this at the same time.

“This.” Harold gestures between them. “Our… arrangement of mutual benefit. You know we can end this at any time. Would you prefer to stop? I surely need not say that it will have no effect on our professional arrangement.”

“You’re asking me _now_?” John says. He gestures between them. John’s shirt is half-unbuttoned, and Harold’s fly is open.

“Well,” Harold says. “I suppose I could have picked a better time, but yes.”

“Right,” says John. He looks at the ceiling and sighs. “What was the question?”

“Would you be happier,” Harold says deliberately, heart in his throat, “if we ended this aspect of our working relationship.”

John looks at him for a long time. “No,” he says at last.

“All right, then,” Harold says, and licks his chest, just above the purpling bruise where a surprisingly burly twelve-year-old had hit John with a wheel wrench. He kisses his way up to John’s shoulder, bites him lightly and palms his erection, eliciting a low noise from John.

“Any reason you’re asking?” John says. He sounds strained.

“No particular reason. It just seemed a good idea to check in.” There are older bruises on John’s ribcage, and a nasty scratch across his hip. Harold supposes they must be from John’s adventure in a garbage chute the previous week. He tuts over them. John takes hold of the back of Harold’s neck and tugs at him gently, getting his attention.

“If I want out, I’ll tell you,” he says. “This doesn’t need to be complicated, Harold, okay?”

“All right, if you say so,” Harold says. He looks at John’s bruised ribcage, and the papers now strewn across the desk. One of them is stuck to Harold’s shoe. He’s abruptly sick of the library. “Would you indulge me so far as to come with me to a hotel room? One with a bed?”

John sighs again. “You’re really killing the mood here, Harold.”

“It’s cold in here,” Harold says. He thumbs John’s nipple, which is peaking in the air, and John twitches. “And this desk can’t be comfortable for your bruises.”

“Whine, whine, whine,” John says, but his eyes are crinkling at the corners. He looks tired. “Okay, let’s go to a hotel. But I want room service.”

John eats an enormous steak, and then falls asleep while Harold is in the bathroom. Harold covers him with a blanket and tries to work at the desk for a few hours, but he mostly ends up watching John sleep. He supposes he should be reassured by their conversation, but he isn’t feeling very reassured at all.

John wakes in the early hours of the morning; Harold hears rather than sees him moving around, the room lit only by the screen of his laptop. When his hand drops on Harold’s shoulder, it startles him. John’s only wearing briefs, and his blotched, bruised skin looks eerie in the blue light.

“Hey, Harold,” he says. “Didn’t think you brought me here to sleep.”

Harold blinks at him. “How’s your head?”

“Fine,” John says. He moves into Harold’s space, and Harold has to touch him. He runs his hands over John’s belly, his hips. John moves closer.

“If all you wanted was a nicer desk -”

“There’s nothing wrong with the desk in the - oh, all right, I’m coming,” Harold says, and closes his laptop. In the soft darkness, John undresses him, and he’s so gentle that it feels like an apology, although Harold doesn’t know what for. When Harold wakes up in the morning, he’s gone.

*

Harold’s usual reaction to being in over his head is to do research. However, he’s learned from John that sometimes asking for help is more effective. He considers calling Zoe Morgan, but it’s simply too embarrassing, and besides, it doesn’t seem expedient to expose John like that. Joss Carter is equally embarrassing, but a safer pair of hands.

He calls when the bullpen is reasonably quiet. She answers her phone immediately. “Yeah, what do you need?”

“Detective Carter.” He had rehearsed what he was going to say, but now finds that the words have flown. He should have written them down. “I wondered - I have a problem that I wondered if you could help me with.”

“Yeah?” He can hear her tapping keys on her keyboard.

“It’s not related to a case, I’m not calling in a professional capacity. It’s a - personal matter.”

She stops typing. “Just what kind of personal matter are we talking?”

“I have a… relationship issue. I want - I need - advice. From a friend.”

He hears the dimming of sound that means she’s walked into the empty processing cell. “Okay, no,” she says. “I have a lot of respect for the work you do, okay? And I care about John. But I cannot be your relationship counselor. That does not come within my job description. Okay? I will bend the rules to help you save people, but that is the limit of our relationship. If you want to be my friend, you can ask me out to dinner first like a normal person.”

“Oh,” Harold says.

“You going to get pissed at me?” She sounds cautious but not worried.

“No,” Harold says, and swallows. “No, that’s perfectly fair. In fact, it’s quite helpful. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Have a good evening, detective.”

*

After some thought, he makes an experiment. Wrapping up for the night, after a perfectly ordinary day without a number, he says, “John, I’m going to a hotel. Would you like to come and have dinner with me?”

John looks at him, blinks twice.

“And sex,” Harold clarifies.

There’s an awful moment when John looks at him with that blank expression. Then -

“Sure,” John says, and puts down his book. Bear looks disapprovingly at them, but he’s used to their hours, and he settles back down in his basket. Harold could take him - he’s found that while most hotels in the city refuse to take dogs, the combination of Bear’s service dog certification (necessarily fake, but true enough in what it signifies) and a large tip upfront usually finds some relaxation of the rules - in this case, he thinks Bear might be a hindrance. John falls in step with Harold. They leave the library together.

“Welcome back, Mr Crane,” says the desk clerk, whose name Harold should remember. “We’ve sent up your dry cleaning. No Bear today?”

Harold can feel John’s eyes on the back of his head, and reminds himself that it’s safe to show John that he comes here, that the point of the exercise is to offer John this trust. Besides, he thinks guiltily, he can always have Harold Crane pick a new favourite hotel.

“I often come here,” he says casually, as the elevator takes them up to the fourteenth floor. “The rooms are very nice.” John’s gaze doesn’t leave his face, all the way up.

(The catalyst to John initiating their sexual relationship was, of course, Harold’s own behaviour, which he had barely factored into the equation. He had taken John to one of his safe houses. He had - he feels foolish even thinking it, but he can’t discount it - he had changed into casual clothes. Could that have been the first time John saw him without a three-piece suit or some kind of workplace uniform? He remembers John staring, and feels his face flush at the memory as it takes on new significance. Harold is realistic enough about his own physical appearance not to believe that John found him overpoweringly attractive in a t-shirt and sweatpants, but John does respond to demonstrated vulnerability. John responds to trust. He desires trust. Of course he does. It’s not about going into the field or adrenaline at all. Harold can’t imagine how he could have been so stupid.)

He’s ordered a room - a suite, really - with two beds. John stills when he sees them.

“Worried about Crane’s reputation?”

“Hardly,” Harold snorts, and begins unbuttoning his jacket. “I thought you might prefer not to share a bed. I didn’t invite you here to deprive you of a night’s sleep.”

“That’s… considerate,” John says. He sounds surprised. “Let me do that.”

He comes close into Harold’s space, gives him a little smirk, and begins to unbutton Harold’s shirt with his dominant hand and his own with the other. He does so like to show off for Harold.

“I think, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take my time with you tonight,” Harold says, and John’s eyes flicker away, before his easy smile comes up like a shield. Harold, for a terrible second, almost hates him. He kisses him instead, on the mouth. John kisses him back, still trying to undress him and walk him backwards towards the bed at the same time, but Harold catches his hands and plants his feet stubbornly in the carpet. John pulls back and looks like he’s considering picking up Harold and moving him to the bed by brute force.

“Please, John,” Harold says. John’s expression stills again in that odd flicker of uncertainty, but this time that other John, the alias, doesn’t return.

“What did you have in mind?” he says. He sounds wary.

Harold takes over undressing him again, running his hands over John’s chest and arms. He unbuttons John’s shirt and kisses John’s collarbone above his undershirt. John tries to take it off, and Harold grabs his wrists and holds them firmly. John’s breath catches.

(Seventeen days before, John’s face had been bloody and his wrists bruised and burned where he’d been restrained with rope. Harold had been on edge, his hip sore from going down five flights of stairs in a hurry, and it had made him testy when John pulled him down onto the couch in the library and kissed him with the taste of blood still in his mouth.

 _At least let me patch you up first,_ Harold had said, pulling back from John’s mouth as John rubbed against him, already hard. When John’s hand snaked down between them in reply, Harold grabbed his wrist tightly without thinking, and John hissed and went still.

Harold opened his mouth to apologize, then noticed that John had become oddly pliable. He ran his finger along the angry-looking red abrasions around John’s wrist.

_You’ll want some ice on those._

_I can think of something I want more,_ John purred, and rolled his hips suggestively. Harold brought John’s wrist to his lips and kissed it, letting his tongue press gently against the too-hot skin. John hissed again, and when Harold looked up, he stared back, wide-eyed.

 _I think I would like to tie you up some time, John,_ Harold said, licking another stripe along John’s wrist and eliciting a pained moan from him. _Would you like that?_

 _Keep doing that,_ John breathed, his eyes dark and hectic. _God, Harold -_

 _I said,_ Harold said deliberately, tightening his grip on his poor, scratched-up arm, _would you like that, John?_

John bucked up against him and moaned again, more breath than sound, and Harold didn’t have the confidence to pursue the point; he was too alarmed at the sudden, urgent heat between them, the formless hunger that had seized and shaken him. He awkwardly negotiated their positions so that he could suck John off and hold his wrist down against the couch, and he pressed his thumbnail into the scratches as John gasped and cursed, hips jerking as he thrust upward into Harold’s mouth as if he couldn’t help himself, and afterwards he flung his arm over his face and panted, and Harold wondered what expression he was hiding.)

“I thought I might cuff you to the bed and suck your cock,” Harold says, watching John’s face, and John flushes all the way up, swallows, then says, “Sure. Whatever you want, Harold.”

Harold hesitates while fastening the second leather restraint to the bedframe, wary of the memory hanging between them of the last time he cuffed John to a bed. John’s expression is bland, a little amused. He hadn’t commented on the restraints when Harold handed them to him to examine. He could easily get out of them, without any force at all; they each have a catch that he can release with his thumb. But his eyelashes flutter a little as Harold pulls the cuff tight around his wrist, then checks the blood flow to his fingers. He’s shirtless, his belt gone, his feet bare. He looks beautiful.

“I’d like you to choose a safeword,” Harold says.

John raises his eyebrows. If Harold didn’t know him very, very well, he’d say that he was bored. “I don’t need a safeword, Harold.”

Harold looks at him. “I know that you could endure almost anything I do to you or stop me by force if necessary, but neither of those scenarios is particularly appealing to me, nor do they sound pleasant for you.”

John’s face blanks, with surprise or something else, Harold isn’t sure. Playing a hunch, he leans forward, close into John’s space. John’s wrists are secured to the bedframe now, spreading his arms wide, and Harold moves close enough that John can’t look away from him.

“What will you do, John, if you want me to stop?”

For a dizzying second John stares up at him like the proverbial deer in headlights. Then he recovers, and that smirk Harold is coming to loathe slides onto his face again.

“Why would I want you to stop?”

“I don’t know,” Harold says steadily, holding his gaze. “Why would you?”

John’s smirk falters, his eyes flicker away and back. Harold kisses his forehead, the ridge of his nose, his ear. John takes a shaky breath. The wrist restraints make a sound as he shifts, his left arm coming down and pulling them taut with a rattle.

“What will you do if you want me to stop?” Harold murmurs. “Will you hurt me, John?”

“No,” John whispers.

“Then please choose a safeword, sweetheart.”

The endearment is sincere but calculated, and John stiffens incrementally against him in what would be a full physical recoil, in another man.

“Don’t call me that,” John says. His voice sounds harsh, forced.

Harold keeps kissing him softly, his throat, his collarbone, the places on his shoulders where the muscles flex. He can taste sweat where it’s beginning to spring from John’s skin, can feel his pulse beating in his throat.

“John,” he whispers. “Beautiful John. I won’t stop, do you understand?” He strokes up the side of John’s ribs, just the lightest touch. The man’s humming with tension. “Sweetheart. My darling.”

That tears a sound from John’s throat. “You’ve made - you’ve made your point.” John swallows, and says, “I’ll say ‘robin,’ okay? Jesus.”

Harold will think later about the fact that John’s safeword is another alias, and Harold’s at that, but for now he kisses John on the mouth, hard, tasting him until the wrist restraints rattle as John pulls them taut again. He groans, and Harold smiles against his mouth.

“I thought you wouldn’t like that,” he says. “I know you very well, John.”

The breath sobs from John’s throat unmistakeably, now. “Harold -”

“All right,” Harold says gently. “All right.” He makes his touch harder, firmer, more what John does to himself when he lets Harold watch, but he still takes his time. He kisses John’s nipple, sucks, bites, and breathes on the tender skin until it hardens into a nub and John’s stomach muscles jump every time he licks it. He strokes the soft places at the sides of John’s stomach, and touches each of his scars, one by one. He gets lost in the changing rhythm of John’s breathing, which begins even, then becomes harsh and uncontrolled, and then slowly deepens into gusting sighs.

Harold runs his hands over John’s legs through the fabric of his pants, feeling the shape of his runner’s calves, the arches of his naked feet. He kisses the fragile bone at the top of John’s foot, and John’s foot jerks in his hands.

“Stop that,” John says. Harold looks him in the eyes and kisses his foot again in the same place, lovingly. John shuts his eyes and tugs at the restraints, hard enough, Harold thinks, to remind himself that they are there, but he does not attempt to get out of them. “You won’t stop,” he whispers, almost to himself. It sounds strangely plaintive, like a question.

“No,” Harold murmurs. “I promise. Not unless you say the right word.”

He runs his finger down the sole of John’s foot, and John twitches, makes a sound of protest. Harold does it again, and again with his fingernail as John’s whole leg jerks in his hand and John writhes against the sheets, then finally blurts out, “Robin! robin, Harold! fuck!”

“Just checking,” Harold says, and puts his foot back down on the sheets.

“You’re an asshole,” John breathes, almost laughing.

“Yes.” Harold smiles into his stomach. “But given that I’m going to suck your cock now, you could be a little more polite.”

John sighs again, and shifts his hips up obligingly when Harold goes to pull down his pants and briefs. His cock is hard and leaking, jutting up into the air.

“You’re being very good,” Harold says, and John melts even further into the mattress as more tension eases from his shoulders. “Thank you for doing this for me, John.”

John seems about to say something, but it comes out in a groan when Harold takes him in his mouth.

Harold’s always liked this particular act, with men and women, but he has a greater appreciation for lying on a bed and sucking cock now that it’s one of the only sexual acts he can get lost in without being distracted by pain and his own physical limitations. The feel and scent of John in his mouth overwhelms all thought, and even his own arousal is only a pleasant buzz in the background. Even though John is very flexible for such a tall man, the way his arms are splayed limits his ability to thrust upward, and Harold has total control, can go down as far as he likes, pause to adjust position for his hip and back, take the time to really learn and relearn what John likes.

He holds John’s hips down and sucks and plays with him for a long time, until John is making sounds Harold has never heard from him before, high and sweetly breathy. None of them have been words for quite some time, so it takes Harold a moment to re-adjust to language when John rasps, “Christ, do you want me to beg?”

Harold considers this as he runs his tongue over the soft, wet head of John’s cock and John keens, his hips flexing uselessly under Harold’s hands.

“I might enjoy hearing you beg, but it won’t materially affect your situation,” he says. His own voice sounds pleasingly rough, but not yet as destroyed as he’d like. “I’ll stop when I’m sure that tomorrow, when we speak over the comms, you’ll be able to hear what I did to you.”

“Oh God,” John says, and closes his eyes tightly. “Oh, Jesus.” Harold goes down again, taking John in until his throat hurts, and John does beg, pleas stumbling over each other at first, then fluent and sure, as if he had needed permission to ask without consequence, _please, you’re making me crazy, oh fuck, please, Harold, please._ Harold strokes his side, almost overwhelmed by the tide of words coming from him. He reaches down to touch himself, wanting to relieve the suddenly urgent ache, and John says in a rush, “ _No,_ I want to - let me do that.”

Harold abruptly can’t bear to make him wait anymore, so he pulls back and sucks hard, working the base of John’s cock with his hand, and John breaks off in a sharp cry and spills into his mouth, shuddering again and again under his hands. It takes him longer than usual to recover, after, his eyes closed and face turned against his shoulder. Harold lies on his side, stroking John’s chest and stomach, enjoying the inside of his own head, which is quiet, for once.

“Can I,” John murmurs at last, rattling the cuffs.

“Oh, of course, let me,” Harold says. His voice sounds messy and cracked, blurring at the edges. In a moment of inappropriate association, he sounds to himself like his father, his old accent creeping through where he can’t quite control his vowels. John’s eyes widen. He surges up against Harold - one hand already free, he’s so fast - and kisses him almost violently, sloppy and biting.

“God, you’re so,” John mutters against his mouth, and then he’s gone, off the bed and in the doorway of the bathroom. “Wait, okay?” he says, and closes the door behind him.

*

Harold has never asked John if he could fuck him, nor has John offered. For one thing, Harold’s injuries make it a challenge, and certainly not achievable within John’s unstated parameters of time and location that have circumscribed their sexual activity up till now. For another, after John’s reaction to Harold’s own offer, Harold had thought it best to follow John’s lead in that area; although he’s never found this for himself, he knows that many men consider being penetrated a particularly intimate, vulnerable, or compromising act, and although he thinks John is too intelligent for that particular species of homophobia, given his past and background he has legitimate grounds to fear - well, everything, actually. In reality John seems to fear very little, but that’s no reason to make him uncomfortable by asking for something he isn’t willing to give.

All that is to say that Harold is completely unprepared when John re-emerges from the bathroom, climbs onto the bed, straddles Harold, positions him with his hand, and begins to sink down onto him, bare, no condom.

Harold makes an embarrassingly incoherent noise, and John laughs breathlessly above him. His body is searingly hot inside, while his hand down between them is wet and a little cold with lubricant.

“Oh, John,” he gasps. “Oh -”

He manages to bite down on the babbling praise that is welling up on his tongue, the endearments that he knows John doesn’t want to hear, the secrets he doesn’t want to tell. It feels dangerously good to have John like this; he feels unguarded, stripped open. John rides him slowly at first, his expression concentrated, then he adjusts his position slightly so that Harold sinks deeper into him, and Harold hears his intake of breath. He reaches down between them so he can feel where his body enters John’s, his own cock and John’s taut ring of muscle. It feels surreal. John moves again before Harold is ready for it, taking Harold into him again and again, and he wants to watch John’s face but he can’t, he can’t, all he can do is endure what he’s feeling as he rides the crest of the wave up and comes with an intensity that is almost like pain.

John is kissing him, and Harold can feel him smiling. He runs his trembling fingers through John’s hair.

“You okay?”

“I think I’ll live,” Harold says in his newly raw, messy voice (God, he likes sounding this way), and he _feels_ John’s shiver. “Are you going to be able to focus tomorrow if I sound like this?”

“Probably not,” whispers John, and kisses him again. It feels like a monumental confession.

Harold drifts, falls asleep for a time, and wakes to find himself alone in the bed, with a blanket pulled over him and the lights turned out. His hip is hurting. He sits up to tuck a pillow under his knee, and in the glow from the street - he hadn’t completely closed the blackout curtains - he sees John in the other bed, a still, indistinct shape under the covers. He wants to crawl in next to him with an ache worse than his hip, a nagging, miserable feeling that he examines with dismay and a growing sense of inevitability. He thinks about the word _casual_ and wants to laugh.

He lies there for a little while longer; he is bone-deep tired, his body welded to the mattress, but his hip feels as if an ice-pick is digging into the joint. After a while, he drags himself out of bed, moving as quietly as he can, and goes to take a hot shower and a painkiller.

When he re-emerges from the bathroom, the lamp is on, and John is watching him from the other bed, his head pillowed on his arm, his face soft with sleep.

“Sorry I woke you,” Harold says, feeling foolish.

“Bad dream?” John says. Harold almost says yes, but he doesn’t lie to John, so he shakes his head.

“Pain?”

“Partially,” Harold says. Then, before he can stop himself, “I wondered -”

He swallows. John watches him.

It feels like the height of self-loathing to say, “May I join you?” knowing that John should say no - has every _right_ to say no, Harold got two beds so that John would be comfortable - but John doesn’t say no. He hesitates, but then he lifts the blanket without a word, and turns out the lamp when Harold has settled next to him. They lie stiffly together.

“You need a pillow under your leg or something?” John murmurs. His breath tickles Harold’s ear.

“This is fine,” Harold says, then thinks better of it. “Actually, yes. Please.”

Harold can’t see a thing, but he supposes John can, because John rearranges them in silence, moving easily around Harold in the dark. Perhaps he does it by echolocation, Harold thinks, slightly hysterically.

“Are you sure -” he begins.

“Shh,” John mutters. Suddenly he throws an arm over Harold’s chest, and burrows his face into the juncture of Harold’s neck and shoulder with a deep sigh. “It’s okay. Go to sleep.”

Harold is suffused with fierce, helpless pleasure. He settles towards John a little, and John makes a sleepy noise that makes his heart turn over. He’s made a serious strategic error somewhere in the past few weeks, but it’s far, far too late to do anything about it. He has time to think _I certainly won’t fall asleep like this_ before the painkiller kicks in, and he falls into sleep like a stone.

*

There’s strangely little awkwardness in the morning. Harold’s phone buzzes him awake with a new number. John is already up, eating toast and drinking coffee. He hands Harold a steaming cup of green tea with a little smile. He’s freshly showered and shaved, and he smells wonderful. Harold’s not at his most resilient first thing in the morning, and for a moment his feelings for John Reese fill his mind, massive and expanding, like the white heat of the universe. Then he pulls over his laptop and begins to run through his security protocols. It’s a grounding exercise for him. By the time he’s on a secure, untraceable connection and is going through their number’s bank records, he feels on more solid ground.

“New number?” John says at last, as he’s pulling on his coat. “Is there time for me to walk Bear?”

Harold nods, waves him out while frowning at the series of incremental withdrawals and deposits made in Stephen Lavizzio’s account. A shower and a cab-ride later, back in the library with his computers, he opens his mouth to speak, and finds that his throat is sore. He feels his face heat as he opens the channel.

“Mr Reese?”

If he hadn’t been listening for it, he wouldn’t have noticed, but there is the slightest hesitation before John says, “Got a name for me, Finch?”

Harold rattles off the information, enjoying the hoarseness of his voice, the way he has to clear his throat. He lets John hear when he breaks off to take a sip of water. It’s an intensely satisfying workaround to John’s parameters. There’s no mention of their sexual encounter or of the fact that they woke up in the same bed this morning; their conversation is formal and businesslike, except for how with every word, they can both hear that John had his cock in Harold’s throat last night. John holds up pretty well until he’s in Lavizzio’s apartment, going through his desk and copying his hard drive, when Harold finally gives in to temptation.

“Are you hard, Mr Reese?”

There’s silence in Harold’s ear.

“If I am making you uncomfortable or distracting you beyond what is safe, I trust you to give your safeword,” Harold says.

“… I’m not sure I’m the best judge of what’s safe right now,” John says. He sounds strained.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t distract you, then,” Harold says, “only I had wondered if you were thinking about fucking my mouth again. I’ve certainly been thinking about it.”

“God,” John breathes. “I can’t jerk off in this guy’s house, Harold.”

Harold’s mouth feels dry, but John’s scandalized tone makes him smile. “No, you certainly can’t. That must be frustrating for you.”

John’s laugh is mostly silent, but Harold can hear it. “You could say that.”

“I know I could,” Harold says. “It’s occurred to me before that I could say all kinds of inappropriate things to you while you interact with numbers and there wouldn’t be anything you could do about it. Not in the moment, anyway,” he amends, getting another silent breath of laughter out of John. He knows they - _he_ \- shouldn’t be doing this. It’s inappropriate, and unsafe. But now that he’s started, he doesn’t want to stop. He can see John through the cameras he’s just installed. John has his back to him and is bending over the desk as he logs into Lavizzio’s computer.

“I enjoyed fucking you,” Harold says, and John straightens up abruptly as he realizes his position. It’s an almost uncomfortable thrill, to catch him unawares for once. Harold is enjoying discomfiting him far more than he should, and he can hardly believe the words coming out of his own mouth.

“Would you like me to tie you up and lick you there until you’re loose and desperate for my cock again, John?”

“ _God_ ,” John says on an exhale, almost a moan. He turns to face the camera and palms his crotch, showing Harold how hard he is. Harold regrets that the cameras don’t have a better resolution.

“Not here, Mr Reese,” Harold says sharply, trying to sound as cold and detached as he can. “Do you have the contents of Mr Lavizzio’s computer?”

“Someone’s coming,” John says suddenly. He moves fast out of Harold’s view. There are a few rustles and clicks, then a woman strides into the apartment. She had a key. Cursing softly, Harold runs her image from the camera into his facial matching software against his database of photographs from Lavizzio’s phone and social media. He can hear John breathing softly into his earpiece all the while.

“It’s the niece I mentioned earlier,” Harold says. “If she’s on good enough terms to drop by unannounced, perhaps Lavizzio’s dispute with his brother hasn’t affected his relationship with his niece. Or - perhaps it has,” he amends, as she begins to go through the desk, tossing papers onto the floor with abandon. “I hope you turned off that computer.”

John doesn’t dignify that with an answer. Harold wonders where he’s hiding. Then he has a malicious thought. He hesitates, appalled at himself, but the idea of John, aroused and unable to make a noise, hiding in a closet with Harold whispering filthy things in his ear…

“You didn’t give your safeword, John.”

On the line there’s only breathing.

“Can you speak without being overheard?”

There’s a brief hesitation. Then John whispers, “Yeah.”

Harold bites his lip. It’s an almost overwhelming temptation. But he knows that his role in this partnership is to pull John back from risk as much as possible, not encourage him in it. When it comes down to it, he doesn’t trust John to protect himself when he should. It’s a realization that puts a chill in his stomach and a damper on his arousal.

“It’s not safe for me to continue, is it? The truth, please, John.”

A longer hesitation. Harold licks his dry lips. “Probably not,” John whispers at last. “Shame.”

“Mm,” Harold agrees. They sit in awkward, aroused silence for the next fifteen minutes, until Ms Lavizzio exits the premises. Harold supposes he could do something about his erection, but it doesn’t really seem fair. He busies himself with checking the niece’s bank records and investigating why the security camera from the foyer of Lavizzio’s building didn’t show her entering - Harold _did_ have half an eye on it, he’s not completely irresponsible. It isn’t much consolation to find that she came in through the bicycle storage facility at the back, let in by a careless resident. Luckily, it turns out that she has left a small, homemade explosive under the desk, so they are able to resolve the case that afternoon.

*

Harold has his speech rehearsed for when John gets back to the library - _this was a mistake, I endangered you, we should discuss the boundaries of our sexual relationship -_ but he doesn’t get a chance, because he doesn’t hear John entering, doesn’t even realize that John has returned until he catches Harold’s shoulder and spins his chair around. Harold practically leaps out of his skin. He always hears John coming in. He realizes now that this is because John has always intentionally avoided startling him.

“Even Stevens,” John grins. Then he’s practically climbing into Harold’s lap, all long, predatory beauty and hungry kisses. The sense-memory of being inside John’s body hits him hard, and Harold is wound up almost instantly to the same pitch of arousal he’d felt while John was hiding in the apartment. It’s too fast, too much.

“Didn’t know you had such a filthy mouth, Harold,” John rasps into his ear, then grabs Harold’s hand and pulls it to his erection. “You’d better do something about this before you get me in even more trouble.”

“I’m sorry,” Harold says, trying to remember what he was going to say as he unbuttons John’s fly. “That was very dangerous and very stupid.”

“Thought that was what you hired me for,” John says, his voice even breathier than usual. “You want my job now?”

Harold squeezes John’s cock, perhaps more roughly than is warranted, and John grunts as if the air has been punched out of him. Harold is suddenly distressed that he knows exactly how John sounds when that happens to him. He knows the noises John makes when someone breaks his ribs, when he falls down a flight of stairs, when he’s kicked, punched, or shot. John’s body feels fragile under his hands; the overwhelming surge of feeling Harold had at breakfast crests over him again, but this time it feels more like fear. John opens his eyes.

“Are you okay?”

“I know I put you at risk all the time,” Harold says, looking into his face. “I’m sorry I did it unnecessarily today. It won’t happen again.”

John’s expression does something complicated. “It was my call. I didn’t tell you to stop.”

“You should have.”

“Not my first rodeo, Harold. You let me worry about what I can handle, okay?”

“If you showed even the slightest bit of self-preservation I might be more inclined to trust you,” Harold snaps, and John’s face shutters before his eyes.

“I was an active CIA operative for four years. I did three tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. You’ve lived your entire goddamn life behind a computer. Which of us do you think is more qualified to make risk assessments in the field?”

“You don’t know anything about where I’ve spent my life,” Harold bites back. “You don’t know anything about me.” It’s petty and stupid, but he’s hardly prepared to have this conversation right now, his heart pounding with arousal and sudden, inexplicable terror.

“You’re right, I don’t,” John says. He pushes Harold’s hands away. “You know what, I’m not in the mood anymore.” He stands up, and turns towards the door.

“John, don’t -” Harold gasps, his breath suddenly coming short. He can’t breathe. He tries to speak, but can only gasp.

“Okay, easy, Harold,” John says. His voice is different. His hands are on Harold’s shoulders, easing him down onto the couch. “Do I need to call an ambulance?”

Harold shakes his head, and manages to gasp out, “Just. A panic attack. I’m fine.” His chest feels rigid, tight, he’s flushing cold and hot and he can only get in short, choking breaths. He closes his eyes and tries to stifle the panic. _In, one, two, three. Out, one, two three_. He thinks, _I am not dying. I am in the library with John. I am not dying._ He learned how to manage this two years ago. He’s almost used to it. The worst part, really, is the mortification of it happening in front of John.

“Anything I can do?” John says beside him. Harold shakes his head. Bear appears from nowhere, and trots over to rest his chin on Harold’s knee. If John weren’t here, Harold would hug him, but he doesn’t want John to see how accustomed Bear is to this. John keeps his hand on Harold’s back, a warm weight between his shoulderblades, and it does help, it’s something for Harold to push against as he tries to take deeper breaths. He thought he was over this, and here it came out of nowhere. He supposes it never will really go away. That thought makes his eyes sting, even though he’s thought it before, many times. He’s furious with himself.

After a little while, the worst of it passes. His chest will expand normally, and he breathes in and out. He wipes his face and blows his nose. John gives him some space to pull himself together, and reappears with a glass of water, a cup of tea, and one of his awful energy bars.

“I hate those things,” Harold mutters, sipping his tea.

“I know,” John says gently. “Eat it.”

Harold gets it down, despite the gritty texture and the cloying artificial sweetener, and does in fact begin to feel better. John sits next to him on the dusty couch, and is quiet as Harold sips his tea and stares into space, exhausted and depressed.

“How long have you been having panic attacks, Harold?” John says at last.

Harold hunches down over his cup. He supposes he can’t very well not answer. “Since my injury. On and off. I haven’t had one in several months.”

John nods. Harold is grateful, suddenly, for his silence, for the way he isn’t telling Harold he should see a therapist or try meditation or yoga or some other trite unhelpful banality.

“I wasn’t trying to manipulate you into feeling sorry for me,” he blurts out. “They come out of nowhere. I’m not really sure what triggers them.”

“Okay,” John says, in a flat tone.

Harold closes his eyes. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t quite true.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” John says, more gently. He puts his hand on Harold’s knee for a second.

“You can - you can leave now, if you want to,” Harold says. “I’m all right.” He takes a deep, experimental breath, and lets it out. He isn’t dying. He’s perfectly all right. “For what it’s worth, I apologize. You may have noticed that I have some - some issues with trust.”

“Yeah, I did notice,” John says. Harold risks a glance sideways and sees a lighter expression on his face. Not a smile, but he thinks perhaps John isn’t angry anymore. His chest loosens just a little.

“Thank you for the tea.”

“You’re welcome.” John hesitates. “You want to come home with me tonight?”

“That isn’t necessary,” Harold says automatically. “I’m perfectly all right.”

“How about,” John sighs, “you just answer the question.”

Harold closes his eyes and swallows the sharp answer that tries to make its way out. He owes it to John to make an effort. He can surely tell him what he, Harold, wants in this moment. He feels a pang of regret at how resentful he has been at John for not telling him what he wants. He’d forgotten how hard it can be.

“Yes, please,” he forces out. “I would like that. Thank you.”

John smiles at him. It probably isn’t meant as a reward - John isn’t cruel in that way, doesn’t give or withhold his attentions to manipulate Harold, even when he could - but Harold still feels grateful.

They go back to John’s place. John feeds Bear, and puts two frozen pizzas into the oven. He wordlessly offers Harold a choice of wine or beer, and opens two bottles of beer when Harold shrugs. He makes a salad. It’s strange, to sit at John’s table and to allow himself to be cared for. It’s strange to realize that somehow he hadn’t ever thought of John having food in his fridge, of having plans that don’t involve Harold, or even really of having his own home, even if it’s a home Harold chose and bought for him. Maybe because of that.

They eat on the couch in front of a Red Sox game. It’s uninteresting, but soothing. John takes the plates away and takes out another beer for himself, makes tea for Harold; he has an unopened box of Harold’s favourite brand in his kitchen cupboard. Harold shuffles closer to him in increments, partly shifting position to ease his back, partly because he is weak, and John is warm, and he can’t very well make much more of a fool of himself today. Their shoulders press together, and Bear, after circling for a while, obviously hoping to be invited onto the couch, settles down at their feet with his back against John’s knees. It’s so domestic it makes him feel dizzy.

John gets up to use the bathroom, and when he comes back, his arm slides around Harold’s shoulders, as if by accident. Harold takes the invitation to rest against him. After a few minutes, John shifts, without taking his eyes off the screen, and tugs Harold back a little so that he can put his feet up on the couch and lie against his chest with John’s arms around him. John does it all very casually, as if he isn’t paying attention, but when Harold rests his head against John’s breastbone he can feel his heart beating in his chest, thump-thumping at a rapid pace. It occurs to Harold to wonder what John is afraid of; whether perhaps they are afraid of the same thing.

Harold takes John’s hand in his and kisses the knuckle of his index finger. He can’t see John’s face, but he feels John’s shaky intake of breath. John’s arms tighten around him. They watch the whole game like that.

*

Harold has been so taken up with his experiment that he never paused to think about what its long-term consequences would be for himself. He’s deceived himself before, more effectively and for longer; this time he resolves to face what he has done to himself before it’s too late.

John was so careful to keep their relationship within limits, and all Harold saw was a defense system with weaknesses to exploit. He realizes now that the boundaries were for his own benefit. To prevent this from happening. He’s already endangered John once as a result of his attachment, and he blamed John for it when he should have realized that this is all entirely his fault.

Well, then. He is probably in love with John.

Harold had always assumed that he would stay faithful to Grace, however illogical that was. He hadn’t committed to celibacy, he just… hadn’t thought he would want anybody else. And John had made it so easy to fall into bed with him, had made it so easy for Harold to avoid thinking of him as a romantic partner. Intentionally, he has to assume.

John is:

  1. an ex-CIA assassin whose record of forming attachments is - complicated, to put it mildly;


  1. in a circumscribed sexual relationship with Harold, with limits which he has policed carefully up until the last few days;


  1. currently lying in bed next to Harold with his fingers curled around the tail of Harold’s pajama shirt, and either asleep or pretending to be.



Harold does not know what to do with any of this information.

*

The sheer intensity of feeling - guilt and confusion over Grace, and uncertainty over John - rubs him raw over the next few days. What he really wants is to leave town for a week, go somewhere quiet with a computer and speak to nobody, but of course he can’t. Instead Harold avoids John. Luckily, a new number comes up the next morning out in the suburbs - not an affluent residential neighbourhood this time, but a neglected industrial area, weed-filled empty lots and crumbling apartment buildings. John installs himself in an awful-looking hotel for the duration and takes some contract construction work to be close to their number, and they fall back into their old roles of field agent and support. Whenever Harold opens the channel between them he remembers the things he said to John while he was in Lavizzio’s apartment and feels his cheeks burn. He hopes John isn’t remembering the same thing.

He can’t stop thinking with a sort of queasy arousal about the way John just sank onto his cock without taking any precautions or even giving Harold the option to suggest them. Harold gives John monthly blood tests himself, takes samples from him and sends them to one of a number of labs in the New York area. John comes into contact with far too much of other people’s blood to do otherwise. John knows that Harold knows he’s healthy, and there have been no risky scenarios since John’s last test. There was no danger to Harold. But John has no reason to know that Harold is clean; they’ve never had that conversation. He simply displayed a total lack of interest in his own safety. Or, he trusted Harold too much. Harold isn’t sure which possibility frightens him more.

Every night that week (abandoning his usual security protocols) he goes back to his own apartment, the one he’s never taken John to, and he lies in bed and misses him with a deep, nagging ache that he can’t shift. He has to stop himself multiple times from calling him just to hear his voice, and feels like a fool.

(And yet, John smiled when Harold agreed to come home with him. And yet, John put his arms around him on the couch. And yet, John slept beside him and rolled over to kiss him in the morning. And yet, and yet.)

*

After four days, John is finally able to turn their number’s brother in to the NYPD after preventing a series of on-site non-accidental accidents. Harold expects him to go straight home, so he doesn’t mentally brace himself as he should for John turning up at the library at eight p.m., and he is totally unequal to the sight of John’s grin when Bear rushes to greet him. He looks up at Harold from the floor, giving him a share in the welcome, and Harold is overcome by a rush of thankfulness that he’s here, that he’s well, and forgets everything that he was going to say.

“Hi,” John says, still smiling, still unguarded.

“It’s nice to see you,” Harold says. “I’d very much like to kiss you.”

John is in his arms barely before he’s finished speaking.

“Hi,” John murmurs again into his mouth. Harold rubs his back; he can feel John’s shoulder muscles relaxing under his hands. He must be tired. John nuzzles closer, slides a hand under his jacket.

“I need to talk to you,” he murmurs, not really wanting John to hear or stop what he’s doing.

“Later,” John murmurs, and kisses him again.

“Have you eaten?”

“No. I picked up something on the way, you want to eat?”

Harold is swept under again by that wave of gratitude.

“You are…” Harold says sincerely, his hand on John’s cheek, and nearly says _perfect_ or _wonderful_. He manages to bite it back at the last second, but he’s afraid it shows on his face; John’s expression changes, and he looks away. Harold clears his throat. “Thank you, I could eat.”

He watches John greedily as he unpacks the food, drinking him in. He remembers a time, not that long ago, when John’s physical presence was a matter of low-grade interest to him, sometimes even an annoyance. He can’t even imagine now not knowing exactly where John is in relation to himself at all times and feeling any distance between them like an ache. It isn’t just lust; it would be much easier to deal with if it were. It’s probably unhealthy. They are both so isolated from the rest of human society.

It’s usually Harold’s responsibility to keep up conversation, and when he doesn’t feel like talking, John reads; Harold never really noticed that before. John doesn’t read this time. He tells Harold about the traffic, then about the poodle he met in the line-up at Thai Palace, then he says, “Missed me, Harold?”

He’s teasing, amused and apparently expecting a negative, which is perhaps why Harold says, “Very much,” and is rewarded with that blank stutter of an expression that he remembers from when he asked John to fuck him.

“It’s ridiculous, really, since we were speaking the whole time,” Harold says, feeling the need to fill the silence. He stares at the table. “But I find that I - I want -”

This is obviously the time to tell him. _John, I find that my feelings for you are beyond the bounds we implicitly agreed upon. I am concerned that this will affect our work. We should discuss how to manage this moving forward._ But he can’t quite get the words out. What in God’s name will John say? Will he refuse to continue working the numbers with him? Will he, surely more likely, call an immediate halt to their sexual relationship? Will he laugh? Tell Harold that it’s his problem to manage? Harold’s had every possible version of the conversation in his head (including, shamefully, the one where John says _me too, Harold,_ takes him in his arms, and - Christ, he’s pathetic) and he still can’t predict the outcome.

Instead, he says, “I want to take you home with me.”

He has a sensation of watching himself at a remove, the way he imagines the Machine watches people, with the same curiosity: _now, why did you do that?_

At the same moment, he knows the answer - because he wants again that vertigo he felt when they were watching the baseball game together with Bear, that impossible domesticity. They haven’t had sex in five days, but what Harold wants most in the world at this moment is to sit with John on his couch. Good god. He hadn’t - he hadn’t truly realized how lonely he has been.

“Okay,” John says. His voice sounds strange. He stands up. “Let’s go before you change your mind.”

It’s unsettling, being known. Harold isn’t sure he likes it at all, but he wants, oh, he wants so much for John to know him. All the reasons he had for keeping him at a distance suddenly seem more like petty power games than real necessity. He remembers, suddenly, with a clarity that hurts more than anything has in a while, that first time he tried to tell Grace about the Machine, sitting outside the Guggenheim on that cold evening. He takes a little time to fetch Bear’s leash, in an attempt to pull himself together.

*

When they arrive at Harold’s apartment, Bear runs straight to his basket and his favourite bone, but John moves in by degrees, taking in everything, touching walls and surfaces, _smelling_ things. Harold slowly realizes that John truly didn’t know where he lived.

“Didn’t you ever find this place?”

“Stopped looking,” John says, pulling down a book from the shelf, apparently at random. He leafs through it, then puts it down on the table. Harold endures it for about ten seconds before going to reshelve it as John watches, a slight quirk on his lips. He almost mis-shelves it on purpose, then forces himself to put it back in its proper place as John watches. Alphabetic by topic then author name. He’s already shown John where he lives, for heaven’s sake, he can let him see how he organizes his books.

“Why did you stop?”

John touches a picture frame, nudges it out of alignment, then nudges it straight again. Is he looking for a safe, or just trying to set Harold’s teeth on edge? “I guess after Root, it didn’t seem important. I knew I could find you. And I knew you wouldn’t run out on me.”

Harold looks at him, startled. “I would never have abandoned you willingly, before Root or after.”

John’s mouth twists into a wry smile. “I know that now.”

“Do you want to fuck me?” Harold blurts out. John’s eyes darken, but his expression doesn’t grind to a halt this time. Perhaps he was expecting this. Perhaps he has been waiting for Harold to ask again.

“Yes,” he rasps, and edges Harold up against the table, brackets him with his body and kisses him for long moments, soft mouth and stubble, and Harold pulls him closer, his head ringing _grateful grateful grateful._

“What’s going on, Harold?” John murmurs into his ear. “What do you want?”

“You,” Harold gasps, “Just you.”

John smiles against his lips. “So why don’t you show me where the bedroom is?”

At that moment Bear decides that he’s had enough and would like to be fed now, please; he knows not to get under Harold’s legs unexpectedly, but John is fair game, so John is distracted rather roughly and only just manages not to knock Harold over. He is obliged to play tug with Bear for ten minutes in the living room while Harold washes and fills Bear’s dinner bowls to the sound of Bear’s growls and John’s startling, unpracticed laughter. Harold leans his forehead against the refrigerator door when he’s done, undone by guilt and happiness.

*

All the other times they’ve gone to bed have felt so well-choreographed that Harold can’t understand why this time he is so clumsy, but it’s an almost reassuring return to form. He and Grace used to laugh together about how awkward he was in bed. He gets stuck in his own shirt, and when John tries to help, he only gets more tangled; then he pulls a button off John’s shirt and nearly knees him in the groin.

“Sorry,” John mutters, his cheeks and chest dull red. Harold is taken aback. It occurs to him that John has always been fully in control, using his physical skill to make up for Harold’s inadequacies, but for some reason, he’s falling short tonight. Perhaps he’s tired. Harold feels the strong desire to take care of him, and thinks perhaps that John might let him.

“It’s all right,” he says gently. “Lie back, put your hands above your head.”

John obeys with an alacrity that makes Harold’s stomach drop with arousal. He finishes undressing as John watches, his eyes dark and intent.

“Now,” Harold says. “I’m going to the bathroom to get some lubricant. I want you to be naked by the time I get back.”

John is naked when he returns, the sheets turned back, his suit hanging neatly on the back of the door, the rest of his clothes folded and put away under the chair, not on it. For such a big man, John always takes up so very little space. He’s returned to the position Harold left him in, arms on the sheet above his head in a way that puts his chest into a lovely curve, his breaths visible as they rise and fall.

“Good,” Harold says. He sits down on the edge of the bed. “Do you still want to fuck me? We can do it another time, if you’d prefer something less demanding.”

John starts to smile, but stops when Harold puts a hand on his cheek.

“I mean it, John.”

John swallows. Harold feels the movement under his fingers.

“Yeah. Now.”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“I want to fuck you,” John says. His voice sounds rusty, strained.

It shivers through Harold, that John will let him see his desire now, that he trusts him enough to be naked in more than one way in front of him. It’s a heady drug.

“Very good,” he says, trying to keep his voice even. “I’m going to lie on my back, and I’d like you to suck my cock while you open me up with your fingers.”

John’s breathing is uneven now, shuddering. He swallows again. “Okay.”

Harold lies down next to John, places the bottle of lubricant on his bare stomach, and says, “You can move now.”

John surges up and covers him with his body for a second of shocking heat. He kisses Harold on the lips, then shimmies down the mattress.

“I love the dirty mouth on you,” he mutters to Harold’s stomach, then he sucks Harold down without meeting his eyes, before Harold is even fully hard.

*

For all his eagerness, John is so careful, so gentle; he fucks Harold with his fingers for what feels like hours, until Harold is limp and speechless, reduced to a puddle of want. John enjoys it far too obviously, and ignores all suggestions, verbal and otherwise, that he might move on to the next stage.

“I just don’t know if you’re ready yet, Harold,” John says, and slides two thick fingers deep into him again, sparking heat deep inside him that he hasn’t felt in so long. God, it’s good.

“You do, I am,” pants Harold. “Please.”

John looks up at him, and cocks an eyebrow. “Yeah? Now?”

“ _Yes,_ ” Harold snaps, and he feels John shiver against him, a little shockwave passed between their bodies. At least he isn’t the only one affected. He almost whines when John slides his fingers out of him, then hesitates.

“Condom?”

“You didn’t use one before.”

“Yeah, but that was -”

“We’re both clean,” Harold interrupts. John sits back on his haunches and looks at him, eyes hooded. His cock is hard and dark, the head visibly wet. It’s obscene, and Harold _wants_ it.

“Safer to use a condom.”

“I’m clean. Would you like to see my test results? They’re in the other room.”

John’s voice is low and dangerous. “It’s not you I’m worried about.”

“We tested you two weeks ago. Have you shared any needles since then? Had someone bleed into an open wound? Had unprotected sex with any strangers? Exchanged bodily fluids with anyone but me?”

John shifts under his gaze. “No.”

“Well, then,” Harold says, his exasperation given a harder edge by frustrated arousal. “Stop stalling and fuck me.”

“Not like you to be reckless,” John says, his face tense, but he does crawl up the bed towards him and nudge Harold to turn over onto his front.

“I’m not being reckless,” Harold sighs, as John rubs his erection against his buttocks. “I know I’m safe with you.”

He feels John exhale against his shoulderblades, and then he starts to press into Harold, and it’s, _oh,_ it’s good. John groans softly. Harold is grateful now for his caution; he feels deliciously on the edge of what he can take, full and aching.

“You feel good,” John says. His voice cracks, and Harold almost can’t bear it. He begins to thrust gently, so careful, exactly what Harold needs, and he can feel himself beginning to fall apart.

The words _oh, my darling_ slip out of his mouth, whispered into the mattress without any conscious intent, but John must hear them, because his breath catches and he makes a sound, just a small one, deep in his chest. Then stops moving and whispers, “Robin.”

Harold is befuddled, lust-drunk. He can’t understand what he’s saying, and when he does, it’s like a dip in icy water. He has no ability to turn his neck at this angle, so he can’t see John’s expression; only the way his knuckles have whitened in the sheets next to Harold’s shoulder, and the way he’s holding himself still.

“Don’t,” John says hoarsely. “Not that, okay?”

Even with the tension humming from him John feels so good inside him.

“What are - what are you safewording? Do you want to stop?”

“ _No._ ” He sounds as desperate as Harold feels. “Just - don’t fuck with my head right now, okay?”

Harold bites his lip. He doesn’t understand. He just wants John to move inside him, so he can feel - so he can pretend -

“Yes. I’m sorry. John, _please_.”

“Okay. Yeah.” John begins to thrust again, to use some of his strength on him, and Harold gives himself up to the oblivion between their bodies. He actually cries out when he comes, purely from the feeling of John inside him and the friction against the pillow under his hips.

“Oh god,” Harold pants, while he’s still trembling from the aftershocks, “Come inside me.”

John’s hips jerk, rhythm stuttering as he comes, and his moan is so quiet it’s barely a sound at all. He rests almost all his weight on Harold for a second, taking deep, harsh breaths, and Harold wishes he could see his face. John is careful pulling out, but then flops onto his side next to him, arm over his face again. Unease winds its way into the warm haze of well-being that is weighing down Harold’s limbs.

“All right?” he murmurs. But John lets his arm fall and smiles, soft-eyed and affectionate, and Harold’s heart turns over.

“Mm,” John murmurs. He tugs Harold’s wrist, the slightest suggestion of a come-hither, and Harold goes, amazed. For an unprecedented fifteen full minutes, John lies curled around him, apparently happy to let Harold stroke his hair, run a fingernail over his bicep and cup his hip with his palm, all the things he’s been wanting, imagining doing with John’s body. He’s had fantasies about doing this while John sleeps, although realistically he’d have to drug him (he wishes he could say he hasn’t had fantasies about that, too).

“Having fun?” John says, smiling. Harold has never seen him so relaxed, and it melts something in his chest.

“Yes,” he says. “You’re lovely.”

A shadow passes over John’s face, and Harold braces himself, but John only mutters something about going to the bathroom and makes his escape. Harold sighs, left alone in the damp sheets. A responsible person - an ethical, trustworthy person - would request that they discuss in greater detail what just happened. A better person than Harold would do that. But the obvious reason why John so hates endearments from him, and the discussion that will inevitably follow, is beyond his capacity; he can’t bear it just now. He can’t. Tomorrow, he’ll be able to bear it. He can have one more night where they lie together and John pretends that he doesn’t know Harold is in love with him, and Harold pretends that John doesn’t mind.

*

A few hours later, John sits up suddenly out of sleep with a gasp. Harold is only dozing, and comes fully awake immediately. He hears John rubbing at his face, feels the heave of his chest as he tries to control his breathing.

“Bad dream?” he murmurs.

John touches his shoulder. “Nothing. Go back to sleep,” he whispers, and leaves the bed.

Harold drifts in and out, and comes awake again - perhaps only a few minutes later, perhaps a few hours - to find that John is still gone and the bed is cold next to him. He gets up.

John’s sitting in the kitchen, the only illumination coming from the nightlight in the hall. Harold can see a reflection on glass next to him; a bottle of his medication of choice, taken from Harold’s liquor cabinet, presumably.

“May I turn on the light?”

John doesn’t say anything, so Harold doesn’t turn on the light. He feels his way into the kitchen and pulls out the chair next to him. This close, he can smell the bourbon.

“Want some?”

Harold can’t see John’s alias smile, the one he hates, but he can hear it in his voice. It’s strange how obvious it is to him now that John hates it too.

“No, thank you. How much have you had?”

“Just one.” He can’t tell if that’s amusement or irritation in John’s voice. He finds John’s hand on the table in the dark.

“You’ll find no judgement here, John.”

“You should cut me loose,” John says, after a moment. “You shouldn’t let me get close to you. You know what I’ve done.”

“And you know what I’ve done,” Harold says evenly. “I’m probably responsible for more deaths than you.”

John’s fingers twitch under his. “ _Couldn’t save_ isn’t the same as _killed_.”

“I meant the Relevants.”

John takes a breath, perhaps to say something, but Harold doesn’t let him interrupt. “I used to tell myself that I didn’t know what they’d do with the names. Then I told myself it wasn’t my responsibility. At least you thought you were paying a high price for something precious. I thought I could have it for free.”

“You’re a good man,” John says. He sounds tired. They’re talking at cross-purposes, Harold thinks, but he doesn’t know what argument John is having.

“John, may I ask you something personal?”

John laughs, a desperate sound, so unlike when he was playing with Bear earlier. “Sure.”

“Why don’t you like me calling you… using endearments? I thought I knew, but I’m not so sure now that I do.”

There’s a long, heavy silence next to him.

“I need another drink,” John says at last.

Harold grips his hand more tightly. “Please.”

“You said you wouldn’t lie to me,” John says, low and fast. “What we have, it’s great. It’s more than I thought I’d have again. I don’t need you to pretend it’s more than it is. You think you’re being kind, but you aren’t.”

Harold stares, flabbergasted. “What - but - whatever gave you the idea that I was -”

John lets go of his hand abruptly. “Harold, don’t, okay?”

“I thought you found intimacy cloying,” Harold says, increasingly confused. “Everything you did… I thought that you didn’t want that with me. That’s why I did it that first time. To make you uncomfortable. My god, did you think I was trying to hold over you something you couldn’t have? John, how could you think that? Am I that cruel?” He hears his voice crack as the realizations tumble over him, each worse than the last. He had suspected, that first time, that John was moving along a familiar road, that he had certain expectations about how sex with a coworker might work; Harold had failed to realize precisely what that meant. Perhaps Harold isn’t that cruel. But Kara Stanton and Mark Snow certainly were.

He closes his eyes so that he can say the next part. He can’t avoid it now. “I was angry with you, although I didn’t think I was. And hurt. I’m sorry, I should have told you.” He takes a deep breath, and forges on. It isn’t all that difficult, after all, to tell John this. “Two years ago, I thought I would never love anybody again. But I find that I. That I love you. If you don’t want that from me - well, I’m not sure if I can help it. But I thought it might help put my actions in context.”

“What about Grace?” John says, visibly skeptical.

Harold swallows. “My feelings for her are separate from my feelings for you. One doesn’t need to replace the other.”

“Come on, Harold, if you could go back to her, right now, are you seriously telling me you wouldn’t?”

Harold used to think about it a lot, in the bad early months. Walking up to his old front door and walking into Grace’s arms. It ceased to be a consolatory fantasy fairly quickly; it hurt too much. Lately, he doesn’t think about it at all, but now it’s because he can no longer persuade himself to believe in it, and the end of that illusion hurts even more.

“John, if I could go back to her right now, circumstances would have to be so different that it’s hardly worth considering it even as a hypothetical. But if I could - and if you and I were both alive and free from danger, which is a ridiculously optimistic scenario - the man Grace loved still died two years ago. I’m a very different person than I was, and I never really allowed her to know me in the first place. If she could forgive me and still want the person I am now - well, you are part of the package. You, and Bear, and all the experiences I’ve had in the last two years. I won’t build another relationship with her based on a lie.”

He breaks off, flooded with terrible understanding. He thought he had come to terms with how badly he treated Grace from the very beginning. He thought he had scrutinized his soul and seen himself wanting; he thought that he would do better if he were given a second chance. And then John gave him one, and he did exactly the same thing. He has withheld crucial information for essentially selfish reasons, built a relationship on a fiction. He has never - until, perhaps, today - given John any indication that he’s more than a temporary fixture in Harold’s life.

John doesn’t make a sound or move. Harold feels as if he’s had some of that bourbon, acceptance of disaster insulating him into a sense of unreality. He’s also cold.

“Will you come back to bed?”

Harold takes John by the hand, and John lets him lead him back to the bedroom and pull him under the covers. John lies next to him, one cold hand unresisting under Harold’s. He smells like alcohol, but not unpleasantly so.

“I’m not that drunk,” John whispers, after a little while. “But I can forget you said all that, if you want.”

“It really depends on how you feel about it,” Harold murmurs back, heart in his throat. “Do you want to forget I said it?” He swallows. “It will still be true, I’m afraid.”

John’s grip tightens on him. “It won’t.”

“Oh,” Harold says, stricken. “John, I - of course it will be. I’ll tell you again when you’re completely sober. Every day, if you like.”

“Tell me again now.” John’s poker face is in shreds, agony so close to the surface that Harold almost can’t bear to look at him. He has never been painfully aware of the flatness of his own affect than this moment. He wishes he were better able to know what to say, how to say it, to make John believe him.

“I love you,” he says. “I will never lie to you. I will always care for you. I promise, John.”

“Don’t promise,” John whispers. His voice sounds ragged. “Things change.”

“Not this,” Harold says, helpless in the face of his pain. “John, my dearest -”

John makes a sound and turns towards him blindly, wraps his arms around him, and Harold holds him, runs his fingers through his hair. John starts to cry. It’s slow, like watching a tree fall. Harold can’t do anything but hold onto him through it. He rubs his back as he shakes and shakes, and murmurs nonsense. “Shhh, it will be all right.”

The storm blows itself out. When he’s quieter, John pulls back a little, and touches the wet patch of fabric of Harold’s pajama shirt.

“Sorry.”

Harold strokes his back, desperate to say anything that will take away his misery. “You don’t need to apologize. This is the first time I’ve had a six foot two ex-CIA vigilante cry on my shoulder; you’re broadening my life experiences.”

John’s shoulders tremble again, perhaps laughing. “All the others were under six two?”

“That’s right,” Harold says, smiling into the dark.

“At least I’ve got that going for me.”

“John, I want to tell you something,” he says. He reaches over to turn on the lamp, partly just to give himself a little more time, a last few seconds of artificial safety. He holds on to John, and steps off the cliff.

“My real name is Harold Metzner,” Harold says. “I was born in Lassiter, Iowa. My birthday is June first. I’m fifty-four years old. My social security number is 113-89-0565. My father’s name was David. My mother’s name was Monica. She died when I was very young.”

John stares at him, hollow-eyed and hungry as an addict. The words spill from Harold’s mouth.

“I was injured in the explosion that killed Nathan in 2010. I’m allergic to cats. I’m an orphan. I like sunflowers. I never graduated from high school and forged my record to get into MIT. I’m Jewish, but I haven’t practiced in years. I -”

“Stop,” John says softly, but Harold isn’t sure he can.

“I don’t really need glasses.”

“I know. Stop, Harold. It’s okay.”

“It’s _not_ okay, it’s -”

John kisses him on the mouth. Harold tries to pull back, but John holds him tightly, his strength like iron; Harold resists for only a second before he relaxes against him and kisses him back. Slowly, the urge to spill all his secrets subsides. He’s terrified by what he’s just done. But it’s also a relief.

“This intimate enough for you?” John murmurs against his lips. He’s smiling. The numbness in Harold’s chest is beginning to give way to something else.

“Did I understand you correctly? You do want this, with me? A romantic relationship?”

“I’d take a bullet for you, Harold, you know that,” John says, looking at Harold as if he’s said something rather stupid. “I have taken bullets for you. What did you think?”

“I know you have tremendous capacity for self-sacrifice. That’s hardly the same thing.”

John shrugs, a shift of movement under Harold’s hands. He won’t quite meet Harold’s eyes. He’s taking a terrible risk too, Harold realizes. Neither of them are good at this. “Isn’t that what love is? Sacrifice? You know that better than anyone I’ve ever met.”

“I thought I did, but the truth is, I didn’t give up anything for Grace when I should have done, when there was still time.” Harold swallows around the pain in this throat. “If I had, maybe I wouldn’t have had to fake my own death to protect her.”

Harold can’t interpret the look John gives him.

“I didn’t mean Grace. You gave up your whole life for other people. To save them.”

“But I don’t want to _date_ them,” Harold says, exasperated.

John is definitely smiling now. “We’re full-time vigilantes, Harold, when are we going to date?”

“Move in with me,” Harold says, heart in his throat. “Now, or later, we don’t have to rush. I want to spend time with you when we’re not working or having sex or, ah, both. I’m not very good at - at trust, communication, partnership, any of this, but I want to try, if you’re willing. What do you want?”

“That,” John rasps. “I want that.” He looks stunned. “I suck at it,” he adds.

“Will you tell me when you’re angry? or unhappy? or the opposite?”

John’s mouth twists. “Maybe.”

“Do you mind if I use endearments? I won’t, if you really don’t like it.”

Apparently reaching his limit for this conversation, John presses his face to Harold’s neck so Harold can’t see his face anymore. “I like it,” he says, muffled. “Just, it’s too much. Sometimes.”

Harold pets his hair. Something dizzying is catching up with him at last, like amazement, or joy, that he can have this. It hurts, a little, and it’s far more complicated outside his own head, but that’s oddly reassuring.

“I think I could get used to it,” John says.

Harold holds him tighter, and John melts against him, with a little sigh that Harold has never heard from him before.

“Who’s your baseball team?” John murmurs in his ear.

“The Cubs,” Harold says.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes, it’s a heavy burden. What about you?”

“I’m more of a football guy, but I always kind of liked the Cardinals.”

“Get out of my bed,” Harold says, and John laughs his awkward, startling laugh, loud in his ear.

“Maybe I’m lying. I have to keep some mystery, so you don’t get bored of me.”

“I hardly think I’ll get bored of you,” Harold says. He touches John’s cheek, rubs his stubble under the pad of his thumb. Another thing he’s been wanting to do for goodness knows how long. He’ll have to make a list. “I’ve come to realize that I know almost nothing about you. But I’d like to learn.”

*

John is:

  1. Uninhibited. Increasingly unguarded. (Harold’s morning tea now comes with a kiss on the cheek. It’s always a surprise. _How long have you been wanting to do that?_ he dares to ask, one morning. _Longer than you’d guess_ , John says. Harold is consumed with curiosity for days, but his attempts to get the answer only make John laugh.)


  1. Not really a Cardinals fan, thank goodness. (They go to see a game when the Cubs are in town; for the four innings they manage to stay before duty calls, John seems to watch Harold as much as the game, his gloved hand brushing against Harold’s regularly, as if to check he’s still there.)


  1. Kind. Generous. Dedicated. Beautiful. (Harold whispers it against his skin every chance he can, and John shudders and twists underneath him and sometimes seems almost to believe him.)


  1. Currently asleep, or nearly asleep, with one arm slung over Harold, his face mashed against Harold’s shoulder, Bear snoring on the other side of him. (Bear, apparently, always had permission to sleep in John’s bed when John took him for the night, something that had escaped Harold’s notice until he found that he was expected to share. Even that is precious knowledge, something John has given him. He realizes he is rather smitten just now; realizes that this is the kind of thing that probably, someday, they might fight about. He supposes they’ll manage.)



*

“This is Carter.”

“Detective.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m not calling in a professional capacity. Is this a good time?”

“Sure.” The bullpen hums in the background. “Everything okay?”

“I - that is, John and I - would like to invite you to dinner tonight. Unrelated to work.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line. Then, Carter says, “Like normal people?” He can hear the smile in her voice.

“I’m not sure I'd go that far. But the sentiment is the same.”

“I can’t tonight. But maybe some other time, okay?”

“We’d like that. Have a good evening, Detective.”

“Night, Harold.”

*

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set around the middle of season 2, ie. long before the Cubs broke their losing streak. 
> 
> I've actually only seen seasons 1 and 2, so if any of the information I've given about Harold's backstory is contradicted in later canon, that's why!


End file.
